"Mayayana" writes:

| Second, all the major distros have had fully graphical
| installers for ages.

I never said otherwise. You're twisting my words.
When I installed Red Hat 4 in 1999 it had a graphical
installer. That didn't make it a useful OS. What I said
was that it's difficult to go far in Linux without needing
to open a console window, and that such primitive
functionality should not be required.

Maybe in 1999 you had to do that.
Do you think things might have changed a bit since then?

| Go ahead, bring up the graphical installer.
| Select install, click on multimedia tools, click on Gimp.
| If that floats your boat, that has been working for years.

Again, your not being entirely straight. You're
talking about being able to install GIMP from a
stored selection of installers that come with a
Linux distribution. (Most of which are usually
outdated.)

What?

The installer (you only need one), goes to the repository.
You get the latest fully tested version.

I did use the graphical installer for GIMP 2.8 on
Windows. First I had to hunt down the Windows
version. The GIMP people didn't actually take
responsibility for that installer. Now they do at
least have it linked from their site, but one has
to understand FTP indices to get it. Do you really
think the average graphic artist knows how to
navigate the FTP site and understand the difference
between a .exe and a .tar.gz?

Are you now criticizing Linux because you had to use
t tar.gz file on Windows?

Then there's the help. A different install, from
a different FTP site. Hopefully it integrates.
Actually I don't remember now whether the help
actually worked once it was installed. It may have.

Once again, Windows.
On Linux, just click on gimp-help.
Separate help is a good thing.
I find web searches much more effective than local
documentation.

I tried GIMP mainly because I'd heard it was
finally going to have MDI design. (Tool windows
docking in a parent window, rather than floating
all over the Desktop.) It turned out the MDI
functionality was less than impressive.

Looks fine to me.
But then I don't walk around with the delusion that
the Gimp developers actually want their package to
be hard to use.

You don't seem to understand just how far all
those little quirks are from the functionality that
has been taken for granted in Windows for decades.
Many people can't find a downloaded file after they
download it.

After you download a package the menus are updated to
include an entry for the package. Why would you be
looking around for any files?

How do you determine which files a Windows installer
has created?
On Linux I have command line tools that tell me which
files are in a package. I don't know (or care) whether
the installer GUI can show the same information.

--
Dan Espen